Thursday, February 14, 2008

After going as far south in Laos as I could and using all but one day of my visa, I crossed the border (two huts on a dusty road in the middle of nowhere) into Cambodia. I went straight up into the mountains in the northeast to Ban Lung, a small, dusty town surrounded first by farmland and then jungle. Just 6 km from town is a beautiful lake, 50 meters deep and perfectly clear. They say it's the best swimming pool in the country. I swam across it (800 meters or so) with a Welshman I met there.

Now I'm in the capital, Phnom Penh. It's a real city, but the roads are full of motorbikes instead of cars. I plan to visit the usual tourist sites here, including S21, a school converted to a prison where the Khmer Rouge under the rule of Pol Pot tortured thousands of political criminals. It's amazing how nice the people are in a country that was ravaged by civil war up until about 10 years ago.